2009 Pulitzer Prize Distinguished Example of Feature Photography

By jeremiah | Published: April 20, 2009

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for Distinguished Example of Feature Photography went to New York Times’ Staff Photographer, Damon Winters, for his coverage of President Obama’s Campaign. Although photographers such as Damon do not shoot photography for the purpose of winning prizes, being awarding one is certainly a measure of success and ability.

We could all learn some creative techniques by observing Damon’s body of work. Damon recieved a $10,000 cash prize in adition to the honor of earning a Pulitzer Prize.

Take a moment to watch a brief narrarated slide show of David Winters’ award winning photo’s. Also take a moment to visit the Pulitzer Prize website for a citation and more of David Winter’s photography.

Posted in Photography News | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Whiten Eyes in Photoshop Quickly

By jeremiah | Published: April 11, 2009

This is a very quick technique for whitening bloodshot eyes in Photoshop. There are more professional methods available, but this one is nice and easy.

Step 1:bloodshot-eye-lasso-tool

Open the image you wish to fix. I’m going to use this image I took of my fiance outside my apartment. If you look closely you can see me in the reflection of her eye.

Now press L to get the lasso tool selected and draw a selection around the white part of the eye. You can do half the eye if you need too and then press and hold the shift key while you draw a selection around the other half of the eye. Feel free to zoom in if you need to.

Step 2:

Click “Select” at the top of Photoshop and scroll down to modify; select feather from the fly-out menu. Enter 2 px in the feather selection option menu that pops-up and press enter. This softens the selection so our changes wont be noticeable.

feather-selection-tool

Step 3:photoshop-hue-saturation-tool

Press Ctrl-U (Mac: Command-U) to bring up the Hue and Saturation panel.

Click the drop down menu at the top and select Reds. Make sure you have the preview button checked and then slide the Saturation bar to the left until your eye looks good.

Click the drop down menu at the top again and switch it back to master. Once you’ve got master selected you can slide the Lightness slider over to the right to bright up the eyes.

If you’ve followed all of the instructions you should have a nice looking white eye now. Good Job! Check out my before and after pictures below.

bloodshot-eye1bloodshot-eye-fixed

Posted in Photo Retouching | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Soft Focus Filter Effect Photoshop

By jeremiah | Published: April 8, 2009

This is a great three step method for adding a soft focus lens filter effect in Photoshop.

Perhaps you wish you would have used your soft focus filter on a crisp landscape photo, or a portrait. Maybe you don’t own a soft focus filter. This tutorial will educate you on how to quickly add a soft focus effect.

We’re going to use this photo of some trees and a pond.japanese-garden I got this photo from some stock site which says I can’t redistribute it, so you can’t have it!

Open the photo you wish to add a soft focus to. Create a duplicate layer in the layers palette by pressing Ctrl-J (Mac: Command J).

Click “Filter” at the top of photoshop to bring up the “Filters Menu” drop-down. Select Blur/Gaussian Blur. If you’re working with a high resolution image you’ll want to enter 20 pixels in the Gaussian Blur menu pop-up box. For lower resolution images, select something like 6-10 pixels and click OK.

Don’t freak out that your photo is all blurred out, we’re going to fix that in this last step.  Go to the layers palette and bring the opacity on your copied layer down to about 50%. You should now have a soft image with a dreamy glow to it. Check my before and after pictures below to get an idea of what your end result should look like.

japanese-garden

japanese-garden-soft-focus1

Posted in Special Effects | Tagged , | 2 Comments